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Angola: Ex-President’s Son Arrested in Anti-Corruption Purge

The son of Angola’s former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos was taken into custody in connection with a US$1.5 billion corruption case, a state prosecutor told the AFP.

The National Assembly building in Luanda (Photo: Wikipedia, CC BY 2.0)Jose Filomeno dos Santos, nicknamed Zenu, the former head of Angola’s sovereign wealth fund, Fundo Soberano de Angola (FSDEA) was in March charged with fraud over an alleged illegal transfer of $500 million while in his former position.

Another former fund manager, Angolan-Swiss businessman Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, is also under investigation.

“Given the complexity and seriousness of the deeds and in order to guarantee an effective enquiry…the state prosecution service decided to apply a preventive detention measure to those accused” in the case, prosecutor-general Alvaro Da Silva Joao said in a statement on Monday.